The Mayo Clinic Cancer Center has been awarded a $6 million research grant from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program to conduct research on biomarkers that may indicate which women with benign breast disease are at risk for eventually developing breast cancer.
Lynn Hartmann, M.D., a Mayo Clinic medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer research and treatment, is the principal investigator and will lead the research team. The research team will include genetic epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, biostatisticians, pathologists and clinicians specializing in breast care.
Women who have a breast biopsy with benign findings are currently defined as having benign breast disease.
"We know that some women with benign breast disease have an increased risk of eventually developing breast cancer and that the cancer can occur in either breast," says Hartmann. "What we lack are good research studies that identify these women so they can receive the necessary screening and risk-reduction strategies."
Each year, more than 200,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with breast cancer. However, very few of the current risk-prediction tests can identify which women are at greater risk for developing breast cancer. This new study will look for molecular risk predictors in benign breast tissue that identify women at increased risk for breast cancer.
The study will draw upon benign tissue specimens taken from 12,000 women who had breast biopsies performed at Mayo Clinic between 1967 and 1991. About 700 of those women went on to develop breast cancer. The benign tissue samples from those 700 women will form the study group for the research project.
A comparison group will consist of the benign tissue samples from another 700 women who, during the same time, did not develop breast cancer. Researchers will compare molecular tissue markers in the specimens from the two groups. Because of the advances being made in cancer genetics and tumor biology, investigators will be able to compare numerous pathways and genes in the two study groups.
SOURCE:
The Mayo Clinic (http://www.mayoclinic.org)
